


Mend

by DahliaJane



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Another Story (Mystic Messenger), Another Story Spoilers (Mystic Messenger), Canonical Child Abuse, Dissociative Identity Disorder, F/M, Mint Eye, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29308920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DahliaJane/pseuds/DahliaJane
Summary: If she was Alice, Ray was her White Rabbit. Yes, Alice had followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, but Alice still hoped there'd be a soft landing waiting for her at the bottom of it. Waiting at the bottom of this one was Ray. An in-canon retelling from MC's POV. Multi-chapter. Updating.
Relationships: Choi Saeran/Main Character, Ray/MC, Ray/Main Character, Unknown/MC, Unknown/Main Character
Comments: 15
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this isn't my first fanfic, but it is my first Mystic Messenger fanfic. I'll be completely honest with you - I'm nervous. Like, really nervous. I'm completely out of my element. Know that I'm always open to constructive criticism. I can't guarantee that I'll put it ALL in practice, but I'll always, ALWAYS listen and take it seriously. I put a challenge to myself: Try to stay as close to canon as possible. Give the MC a perceived flaw to work with - just enough to keep the story character-driven (as it's from her point of view), and to have her fit in with one of the overall themes of the game - that everyone has an issue/issues to overcome, and that what you see on the surface isn't necessarily a reflection of what's going on behind the scenes. It's written in the third-person, just because I've always been more comfortable with that. Anyways, this was really long and boring. I hope the story isn't. I'll just hope it all works out. If you've made it this far, I'm already thrilled. :)

The banging on the door, the black suit, the tousled hair. _Of course_ she suspected something. How could she not? As he drew closer to her, she could see that his pupils were the size of pinpoints. The wide-eyed, almost child-like awe in them was gone. Left in its wake was crosshair-focused fury – the eyes of a young man who had seen too much and not enough, had experienced an insurmountable amount of suffering in the short years he’d been on this planet, and now he was going to reap what all that trauma had sewn. Whatever scars marked his skin and his soul were going to mark hers in short time, she was sure of it.

**oooOOOOooo**

She thought life hadn’t been too great to her either. That’s how she had ended up here in the first place. She had hurled herself into this lavish hell without much thought because life had become one long, mind-numbing blur with no end to it in sight, and nothing had intrigued her in eons the way his voice had. Some days she would sleep all day because she just couldn’t bear being awake. It was dark when she went to bed, then dark again when she woke up. If she _was_ awake, she’d spend most of that time watching dramas or just listening to music on her phone while rifling through the usual internet nonsense. She played the occasional dating sim and peeked in on a message board here and there, mostly to find artwork for her phone’s background or a recommendation for something new to watch. She didn’t really interact with anyone. She preferred to be a lurker, both online and in life.

Was it depression? She wasn’t certain. All she knew for sure was that she couldn’t explain why she was sad – just that she was. Almost constantly, and sometimes despairingly so. It was frustrating because how can you fix something you don’t understand? How do you stop crying when you don’t know what started you crying in the first place?

And so she resigned herself to being broken.

_Nobody’s perfect, right?_

She didn’t remember downloading the app. It was just there one day. She was trying to clear up some storage on her phone by getting rid of pictures she didn’t need anymore, puzzle and word games she was bored with, old dating sims she’d exhausted...and that’s when she spotted it. She almost deleted it without a second thought, but curiosity got the better of her. She must have downloaded it for a reason – how would it have ended up on her phone otherwise? She signed up simply to log in and see what the app was about, using inarguably the most unimaginative username on the planet – “MC”.

The next thing she knew, she found herself sitting in a car being driven by a complete stranger, wearing a sleep mask and clutching her phone to her chest. Was she crazy?

She told the voice on the phone that he could just call her “M”. He didn’t ask her what it stood for. She guessed maybe he’d just interpret it as being some sort of play on a name like Emma or Emily or whatever. But then what difference would a fake name make _now?_ A fake name wouldn’t keep her from getting strangled and stuffed into the trunk of a car by the driver she was currently making small-talk with.

Okay, it must be depression. Like, really bad depression – bad enough to give her a deathwish. She was headed to who knows where in a car driven by who knows who at the behest of a disembodied voice who wanted her to test out a game. Nothing about this made any sense, but she was going along with it. She wasn’t happy with her life, but she did still _want to live_ , didn’t she? This just seemed like suicide.

Yes, Alice had followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, but Alice still hoped there'd be a soft landing waiting for her at the bottom of it.

_As for myself…_

As for herself, she just didn’t know. She didn’t know what she wanted or didn’t want anymore. All she knew was that she wanted something to change.

Waiting at the bottom of the rabbit hole was Ray.

If she was Alice, Ray was her White Rabbit.

_Ray…_

_Light from the sun._

She couldn't see him, but she heard him chuckle, and suddenly she felt a flutter in her stomach.

“Didn’t you think ‘Unknown’ was a funny name?”

 _No stranger than “M”_ , she thought wryly.

He had taken her hand to help her out of the car, had held it as he led her to what she was starting to pray wasn’t a cage in someone’s basement. He was wearing gloves. Murderers wore gloves.

The way he held her hand, though…so gingerly, like he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t break it if he didn’t take the utmost care with it. It made her feel precious. It made her trust him before he’d even taken the sleep mask off her, and she hated that. In her mind, the two of them had already run the entire gamut of an imagined friendship that ended with him leaving her for the same reason everyone else always did. And this was before they had even reached their final destination. Wherever _that_ was.

She braced herself for whatever was going to come next. He removed the sleep mask.

_Wonderland._

Before anything else – the sunlight pouring in through the large windows that overlooked a lush and seemingly endless garden, the elegant furniture, the fresh flowers that decorated the surface of just about every tabletop in the most opulent room she’d ever been in – before any of that, she saw his eyes. They were the strangest, most bewitching eyes she had ever seen. They were a pristine minty green. She didn’t know green eyes like that existed in the real world. They timidly met hers for a breathless few seconds before he quickly cast his gaze down as though he had just seen something he wasn’t meant to. Unable to keep her curiosity on a leash, she tipped her head one way and then the other, noting his long, dense eyelashes and the cotton candy pink accents in his otherwise snow-white hair. He was taller than her, willowy and elegant in a black waistcoat, tan trousers and a magenta morning coat. The combination made him look like something out of a fairytale. He was even wearing a crisp, white shirt with ruffles at the neck.

_I really hope he doesn’t turn out to be a cannibal or something._

_No. He’s too beautiful._

_Wait, what are you even talking about? You’re not a child. You’ve read enough books and watched enough movies to know that a beautiful face doesn’t guarantee a good heart._

_Would anyone be able to guess by looking at you just how ruined you feel on the inside?_

As Ray spoke to her, he smiled, but the smile never reached his eyes. Maybe it was because he was tired, she had thought to herself as she observed the very dark circles under them. She tried not to let her mind drift to dark places. Places like, “Maybe he isn’t making eye contact because he feels guilty about something that hasn’t happened yet.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If she was Alice, Ray was her White Rabbit. Yes, Alice had followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, but Alice still hoped there'd be a soft landing waiting for her at the bottom of it. Waiting at the bottom of this one was Ray. An in-canon retelling from MC's POV.

Her phone would buzz with a call or a text at all hours of the night. She’d get calls at something like 3 AM. What kind of a game wakes you up with a phonecall at 3 AM? She had the chatroom open almost constantly because she just never knew when someone was going to pop in. The emails she had to respond to from prospective party guests felt real, even the silly ones (Vampire? Really?). She thought that when she wasn’t playing the game, she’d be able to explore the garden and the rest of the property. But replying to emails almost felt like a fulltime job. Ray would tell her how much she was helping him out, and that his boss was happy with her work. Her _work._ If Ray really wanted some constructive criticism about this game, she had plenty to give him, starting with that.

The problem was he never really asked for any – at least nothing technical. He mostly concerned himself with whether or not the characters “suspected” her. Suspected her of what? Maybe the game’s main story was some kind of murder-mystery. The twist would be – dun-dun-DUN! – _she_ was the murderer! But then who was the victim? Rika? Was there going to be a second murder victim? Jumin seemed to be the most likely candidate for that. Jaehee could be the put-upon employee who finally snaps. Or Jumin would mention his cat one too many times and Zen would end up just going berserk.

Maybe she was completely off-track and V was behind Rika’s death. Besides Yoosung, no one seemed to suspect him of having done anything unsavoury. Yoosung was always trying to remind everyone that V was “full of secrets,” and defending his right to question V’s claim that Rika had committed suicide when no one had ever seen a body. _Hmm…_ Yoosung could be the one to lose it and go after V. He was pretty adorable – young, ostensibly naïve and sweet, but appearances weren’t everything. There could be some sort of dark backstory there she had yet to discover.

Ray often bad-mouthed V, warning her that he was conniving and “a hypocrite”. She wondered if Ray was telling her that to keep her from guessing who the real bad guy was too soon. Ray spoke similarly of Seven. Seven staunchly defended V – he and Jumin would usually be the ones to tell Yoosung to back off whenever V’s integrity came into question. Seven…Seven was intriguing. Something told her that there was more to him than meets the eye. All that quirkiness, all those jokes…they could be weaving a mask of sorts to keep everyone from knowing who he really was.

She knew what that was like. Before she grew too tired to keep it up anymore, she was the one laughing and making jokes to keep her friends from suspecting something was wrong with her. Maybe if she had just told them there was something wrong with her instead of keeping it all to herself, she wouldn’t be so alone now.

Except she wasn’t alone now. She had Ray.

**oooOOOOooo**

The search engine app on her phone had been removed, which was a bit of an annoyance as it would have come in handy for her “work”. Some of the invitees would ask the most ridiculous questions, and without any way to do any research, she had to answer the questions off the top of her head. Ray had done something to the phone, something that limited her ability to access the outside world. Perhaps he had done it so that she wouldn’t get distracted from playing the game, or maybe the need to keep wherever they were a secret was even more serious than she thought. Either way, it was wholly unnerving.

Even more unnerving? Ray himself. The mysterious White Rabbit who had led her here, the man she had followed of her own accord with nary a question nor a concern for her personal wellbeing.

She had no reason to trust Ray, but she did. She _trusted_ him, and that scared her. The more time she was able to spend with him and speak with him, the more she came to care for him, and the more she missed him when he was gone. He was so incredibly kind-hearted and considerate. He didn’t call as often as she would have liked, but when he did, fireflies would light up her insides at the sound of his voice. For the first time in years, she looked forward to waking up in the morning. Ray would bring her tea, carefully crafted desserts and lovingly prepared meals every chance he could. If he wasn’t able to bring them himself, he made sure someone else did like clockwork. She wondered if that was why the AI’s were constantly asking her if she had eaten – because he programmed them to do so. Her comfort and safety seemed to be of the utmost importance to him.

He checked in on her as often as he was able to. He asked questions about the game, but he also wanted to learn more about her. She wanted to learn more about him, too.

But, God – he always looked so exhausted. Happy to see her, but tired. His beautiful eyes were rimmed with black, and he was pale. Naturally fair-skinned, but ashen, as though he hadn’t slept or eaten for days on end. She asked him if he ever got to enjoy a little time in the garden. He knew so much about botany that it only seemed natural he’d want to spend as much of his spare time as he could out in the sun and the fresh air. He told her that he was too busy, but he did send her a picture once of him standing out in the garden, and photos of flowers that he had taken himself, perhaps to ease her mind a little. He went out of his way to keep her from worrying about his health, but that just seemed to be adding to his workload. He never let her feel that way, though. He wouldn’t have it.

One evening her curiosity got the better of her and she left the room to look around a little. The marble halls were empty, but she could hear voices nearby, so she kept her little adventure short. She didn’t want to run into someone and have to make polite conversation with them (nothing had changed there). On her way back, her phone buzzed. It was Ray. There was a slight tremor in his voice when he asked why she wasn’t in her room. He told her he had put together a bouquet of flowers for her that he had picked from the garden. When she found it laying on her bed she sighed contentedly, thankful that he’d actually managed to get outside even if it was still technically work.

Wait. Did she just call it “ _her_ ” bed?

She inhaled the scent of the flowers – red roses, and fresh green leaves. She unwrapped them and saw that every thorn had been painstakingly removed. She shifted her attention to the velvet ribbon that had been securing the bouquet.

It was amber, the same colour as her eyes.

Was that just a coincidence?

She brought the strip of fabric closer to her face and breathed in deeply. Fresh blossoms and earth, and that smell she could never describe – the smell of an imminent thunderstorm, the very last second before the clouds would burst and the rain would start to fall. It was Ray’s scent. Or maybe the ribbon just smelled like a ribbon and her imagination was imprinting the memory of his scent on it.

She missed him.

He had told her that he wanted to sit and have tea with her one day, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen until his boss was completely satisfied with his work. She decided that she would devote every minute she could to getting through the game and giving Ray whatever feedback he required to finish his assignment.

Before climbing into bed that evening, she took a long bath in the porcelain clawfoot tub in the ensuite bathroom, but not before tying her hair up with the velvet ribbon. Her phone stayed in her hand all night so that she wouldn’t miss a single call. She had a job to do, and for Ray’s sake she was determined to do it well.

She was starting to lose track of time. Not just the hour of the day, but also the day itself. She had met Ray on a Saturday. How many days had passed since then? It didn’t seem to matter anymore. She was starting to wonder if this was where she belonged.

Then one day Ray said her name, or at least what he thought was her name – “M” – and she relished the sound of it on his lips so much that she decided to keep it.

_Emme._

She liked that. Whether she would be able to keep seeing Ray once he had all the information he needed from her, or not, Emme concluded that her life would never be the same from here on out.

New life, new name.

**oooOOOOooo**

Ray seemed to be looking forward to Emme leaving as much as she was, which is to say not at all. Whenever he said, “Please don’t leave,” she promised him that she wouldn’t – a promise she desperately hoped she’d be able to keep. At first she wasn’t sure if he meant “Please don’t leave until I’ve completed my work,” or “Please don’t leave me here alone.” Both made her sad for different reasons, but she didn’t have to wonder about his intentions for long.

During a rare break he logged into the messenger. She was squinting her eyes and trying to make out what his avatar was supposed to be - _Is it an eye? A bird? Is “Mint Eye” his handle?_ \- when Ray made his feelings clear to her, which wasn’t exactly the paradigm of romance. She wanted him to tell her how he felt face to face. Her name was so absurdly beautiful in his mouth.

She had read his words over again at least three times to make sure she was seeing what she was seeing. “Because you’re mine,” and “I’ve never felt this way before.” He mentioned sitting down to eat with “a special someone” who told him that all his sense seemed entirely tangled up in Emme. This special someone’s words made Ray wary of expressing his feelings because they had concerns that he might be growing obsessed with Emme.

_Special Someone needs to mind their own business._

Admittedly, yes – emotionally, things were progressing very quickly. It was like up until now she and Ray had been struggling to stay afloat in the same cold, dark waters, and once they found each other, they couldn’t let go for fear of drowning.

_Um…that doesn’t sound healthy at all._

But they had both been lonely and subconsciously searching for someone who understood them for so long, so of course feelings would rush at them like a dam had burst. That was just to be expected, wasn’t it?

She started typing a response when another message popped up.

“I want you to wreck my head.”

She bit back a gasp.

_Oh._

_Okay, that’s not good._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If she was Alice, Ray was her White Rabbit. Yes, Alice had followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, but Alice still hoped there'd be a soft landing waiting for her at the bottom of it. Waiting at the bottom of this one was Ray. An in-canon retelling from MC's POV.

Emme spent one afternoon in the chatroom sitting by the window overlooking the garden. She was hoping maybe she’d spot Ray. Earlier that morning she had received a call from Jaehee after a testy conversation in the chatroom between Jumin and V.

Things during the chat got tense fast – Jumin didn’t like that V was being so casual with Emme when they still didn’t know a thing about her. V did his usual “just trust me” dance, which only seemed to aggravate Jumin further. Then the subject of Rika came up. Even though they were just AI’s, Emme’s anxiety increased several notches and she almost ended up cutting the chat short by shutting off her phone. Apparently, the whole thing had ruffled Jumin’s feathers enough that, according to Jaehee, he had gone AWOL. Now Jaehee was frantically trying to track him down.

_Okay, Jumin is definitely going to be the next to die._

For fun, Emme suggested Jaehee meditate on Zen since she was such a mega-fan of his. Jaehee was always the first person to comment on Zen’s seemingly endless stream of selfies. She even had a funny little emoji dedicated solely to reacting to Zen’s pictures. It was kind of endearing.

_Oooh…Maybe Zen is the next victim. Jaehee becomes a crazy, obsessed fan, and then --_

She asked Emme if she did the same thing – thought about someone special when she was feeling anxious. Emme reached up and touched the amber ribbon in her hair.

 _I think about him all the time_.

At around noon, Ray popped up in the chatroom. She cursed herself for being so excited so soon after admitting to herself that their co-dependency was…well…not exactly ideal. He said his head was killing him, and that the painkillers he usually took for his headaches had stopped working.

“My body’s probably just gotten used to them. I think lately I’ve been putting more pills in my mouth than food.”

Emme frowned, making a mental note:

 _Pill popping – that isn’t good either_.

“I’m worried about you, Ray. You need to take better care of yourself.”

“You need to take good care of yourself, too, Emme. Promise me you’ll let me know when you aren’t feeling well. There’s a doctor on site in case you need to see one, or I’ll tend to you myself if I can. I know better than anyone what it’s like to be sick all the time and not have anyone around to care for you.”

She felt a pang in her heart at that. She wondered if his situation had improved. Was anyone looking out for his wellbeing now? Because it certainly didn’t sound like his boss thought of him as anything more than a machine that ran twenty-four hours a day.

“You won’t be able to take care of me if you’re sick yourself, so we’ll just have to promise each other that we’ll be good to ourselves.”

There was a pause that went on longer than she was comfortable with. Then –

“I’ll try my best for you, Emme. I’ll do anything I can. Just…don’t leave.”

“I don’t want you to turn it into more work, Ray. You need to take it easy. Maybe spend some more time in the garden during the day,” she typed. “Not to pick flowers for me,” she quickly clarified. She had no doubt he’d rush out there the first few minutes of freedom he had just to put together another bouquet if she didn’t. “Just to get some fresh air and some sun, I mean. Maybe you can eat your lunch out there. Is your break the same time everyday?”

“Things are really busy right now. I don’t really have the time to take breaks. But when I’m done with this assignment, I’m sure I’ll be allowed to see you more often. You’re lonely, aren’t you? That’s my fault. I’m so sorry.”

Emme’s heart sank. _Actually, it’s not your fault_ , she wanted to tell him. _It’s the fault of whoever this sadistic boss of yours is._

Ray was so eager to please her, but each time they spoke, whether in the messenger or on the phone, she would find that they were going in circles. What would make her happiest was knowing he was healthy. She would gladly forfeit the chance to see him in person if it meant he was using that time to lie down when he had a headache, sleep when he was tired, or eat when he was hungry.

Before he could change the subject like he almost always did when she asked him why he always seemed to be working no matter the time of day, she typed, “Don’t just do it for me, Ray. Do it for yourself.”

They chatted a little about Jumin. Unlike the other characters in the game, Ray seemed to like Jumin (though his exact words were “he’s the least unfavourable”). He appreciated his thoughtfulness, his loyalty to his friend (even if it _was_ V), and his stoicism. Emme got the impression that he particularly appreciated the latter. Ray admitted that he didn’t have a real handle on his emotions. He envied Jumin’s ability to keep his feelings close to the vest. She wanted to tell Ray that reining in all his emotions, especially the negative ones, had the potential to backfire on him the way it had backfired on herself, but it was too late. Ray was done talking about feelings.

The next message he sent gave Emme pause.

“Jumin is in line to become CEO of his father’s company. He’s analytical, dedicated to his job…He’ll be a great asset to us.”

She started nibbling at her fingernails.

_Us…?_

That night, after a rather strange call with V, Emme lay on her bed in the pink slippers and bathrobe Ray had gifted her on her first day here. She thought it was funny that everything in the room was pink – the furniture, the bedding, the towels in the bathroom. It was like living in a dollhouse. Ray had picked out everything in the room, including the drapes, carpet and furniture, and he was very child-like in so many ways, so she wouldn’t have been surprised to find out someone had told him all girls like pink and he just ran wild with it.

The phone sat quietly on her bedside table and she was grateful for the silence. She started combing through all her conversations with Ray since she had arrived, trying to recall things he had said or done that had nagged at her – things she had dismissed so that her trust in Ray would remain intact.

Worrying details began to resurface.

Why did he keep reminding her that the characters in the game were…well…characters in a game? He was jealous of them, jealous of the thought that she might fall in love with one of them.

Almost every dating sim Emme had ever played had a villain in it. This game had two – V and Seven. At least that was what Ray kept telling her. A few times during their conversation he mentioned that he didn’t want to ruin the story for her by giving away too many spoilers, especially about the party that was supposed to happen at the end of the game, but weren’t the names of the main villains pretty big honking spoilers? It was like Ray couldn’t help himself. He hated them so much – hated two characters that he himself had created.

V’s calls. The questions he asked were sometimes awfully specific. Like, alarmingly specific. She knew the game was supposed to be realistic, but the questions from some of these characters were pointed and seemed to parallel what was happening to her in real life. It was eerie.

It was the first time she considered that the AI’s – Jumin, Jaehee, Yoosung, Zen, V, and Seven –

Emme sat bolt upright, a violent frisson of realization running straight through her skull and down her spine.

_They’re real._

_They’re all real._

The calls, the texts, the chats, the crazy emails…

They were all real.

Ray knew what was happening in all those chatrooms, down to the very last detail, not because he had created the AI’s, but because --

_He’s watching them._

Emme’s hand quivered as she moved to cover her mouth. She felt like she might vomit.

Ray isn’t an app developer.

_He’s a hacker._

And if the members of the RFA are real people, that would mean the hacker Seven has been frantically trying to locate all this time, the hacker Emme has been protecting the identity of _all this time_ is…

_Oh, God…_

_God, please…no…_

Ray had been lying to her. _All this time…all of it._

It was all a lie.

There was no way she was going to be able to fall asleep now, not that she ever ended up getting all that much sleep at night anyways as she was constantly checking her phone. But even just lying down was going to be impossible for her right now. She couldn’t call Ray. She wasn’t ready to confront him, not yet. Right now she wouldn’t even know what to say to him. She needed to go for a walk. She wanted to rip the ribbon out of her hair and shake every last crumb of fondness she had been harbouring for him right out of her big stupid head.

Emme walked across the room on unsteady legs. She opened the door to her bedroom and her heart leapt to her throat. She slammed the door shut again and pushed against it with every bit of strength in her body.

There was a man draped in a hooded, black robe standing on the other side of her bedroom door.

_I need to call the police._

_You don’t know where you are, idiot. And all that stuff Ray did to your phone when you first got here – would a call even go through if you tried?_

The man spoke, his voice muffled by the door, and every hair at the back of her neck stood on end.

“Miss, please forgive me. I’m sorry to have startled you. I’m Believer C739. Mister Ray assigned me to you. To secure your safety.”

_Believer C7…what?_

_Wait a second…_

“Have you been standing outside my door every night since I’ve been here?!”

_What the actual fu—_

“Yes, Miss. At Mister Ray’s behest. Again, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Quieter, he said, “Please don’t tell Mister Ray. Please.”

What in holy hell was going on?

“Believer, uh –”

“Believer C739, Miss.”

“O-okay. Um…where is Mister Ray right now?”

The man’s answer came out in a single breathless rush.

“He’s working in the Information Room. Please, Miss. _Please_.”

He sounded utterly terrified.

Meanwhile, she _was_ terrified.

She pressed her back to the door, still leaning all her weight against it as she slid down to the floor and drew her knees up to her chin. Trembling, she squeezed the phone in her hand so hard her knuckles turned white.

She stayed like that until morning.

**oooOOOOooo**

Ray talked a lot about betrayal. He told Emme that he had been abandoned in the past by people he loved and trusted, and confided in her that he was afraid she might do the same. In exchange, Emme confessed that she had felt betrayed by loved ones as well, that she felt abandoned by her friends, too.

She accepted a lot of the blame for what happened with her friends. She knew she suffered from some sort of mental illness, but she hadn’t done a thing to address it. She hadn’t confided in her friends. Those things were her fault. She felt like she was no fun to be around, and that everyone knew it. Pretending to be something she wasn’t took its toll on her. She thought that keeping her distance was doing her friends a favour because the last thing she wanted to be was an emotional burden. And, well, being at home alone was just…comfortable. Feeling lonely in an empty room, even with tears streaming down her face and sobs mangling her throat was still marginally preferable to feeling lonely in a room full of people with a big sham of a smile on her face. Still…

_Still._

Sometimes Emme wished her friends, her loved ones, had tried a little harder to keep her.

So, yes, she felt betrayed. She didn’t want to, but there it was.

But she didn’t hate them the way Ray hated his trespassers. He never went into much detail about his past, but his feelings of betrayal seemed to run very deep. There was hurt there, but also what could only be described as a lust for some form of reckoning that he couldn't always repress. When he talked about the people who had damaged him so, tears would gather and shiver against his wide, unblinking eyes, but never fall. His voice, like warm, viscous honey in her ears would turn into sinew, bone, and a heart that beat too hard and too fast. It had only been days, but Emme already wanted to embrace every part of Ray. She wanted him to wrap his arms around her and pull her inside of him. She could protect him there. She could make sure no one could ever hurt him again.

Sometimes he would blame himself for the way he was treated, and Emme would hastily try to put a stop to it. Whenever he told her he didn’t deserve her care and concern, she fiercely insisted that he was wrong, so very wrong. It wasn’t easy, though. He’d flinch, mistaking her frustration as being aimed at him rather than the people who had done this to him – the people who had made him come to hate himself so much. He’d wring his hands together, shift his weight nervously from one foot to the other and cast his eyes to the ground. He could barely look at her.

She had tried to reach for his hand once during the briefest visit to bring her some lunch. It wasn’t just to comfort him - though that was a large part of it - but because she wanted to touch him. There had been no physical contact between them since he’d led her here, cradling her hand in his. The thought of finally touching him again after so long left her feeling hot and dizzy. But when the tips of her fingers brushed his gloved ones, he instantly recoiled from the physical contact like she had burned him. He looked ashamed of himself.

Now Emme knew why.

His reaction to her touch was so extreme. Either he was _that_ disgusted by her attempt to get close to him, or he was afraid of something, just like that man she had discovered outside her bedroom door. Afraid of her, or himself, or…

_…someone._

_A special someone._

Except that man seemed to be afraid of Ray.

Until last night she would have wondered who could ever possibly be afraid of Ray.

_“Please don’t tell Mister Ray. Please.”_

_Mister Ray._

Ray promised Emme that she could trust him. He swore to her that he would never betray her.

But he had betrayed her in the worst possible way. Her heart was completely decimated. She would have been furious if she wasn’t also grappling with things that had suddenly become much harder to do, like breathing and standing.

She had been balled up in the corner of the bedroom closet since after breakfast, still in her robe and slippers. Her eyes were red from crying all night. She had been afraid to let anyone in the room, so she asked the person dropping off her breakfast to leave the tray outside the door, explaining that she wasn’t dressed yet and that she would bring it in herself. Once she was sure they were gone, she moved fast. Quick as lightning she swung open the door, dragged the tray in along the floor, and then shut the door again. She couldn’t eat, but she couldn’t let anyone suspect that something was wrong with her, so she ended up moving the food around on the plates and flushing some of it down the toilet.

The pieces of the puzzle she had pushed back into the shadows of her mind revealed themselves once again and began to fall into place. Everything made sense the moment Emme realized that she had been dealing with real people and not AI’s this entire time. She wouldn’t be here if Ray had told her that she’d be interacting with real people, helping them plan an _actual_ party, no matter how drawn she had been to him. She wasn’t incredibly fond of real people, or parties for that matter. Maybe it was because she was shy, or always afraid she’d say something stupid and die of embarrassment. Maybe it was because people who befriended her eventually grew tired of her constant backing out of plans at the very last second, of not answering their calls, of turning down their invitations.

But she couldn’t help that. How could she explain her strange behaviour to them? She hardly understood it herself. The prospect of a game where she could interact with people without actually having to interact with people seemed just perfect for her.

Okay, it was a little like being part of a clique of imaginary friends (and she hadn’t had an imaginary friend since she was a child) but she was enjoying herself. She was comfortable with her pretend people. She was a good listener. She was personable. She was the kind of friend she couldn’t be in real life. She came to care for these characters and felt like they had come to care for her, too. She had almost wished they _were_ real people.

And now Emme wished so badly that they weren’t, because her sheer stupidity and willful blindness had put them all in danger.

Seven had been ready to expel her from the chatroom on sight, waiting only for V’s say-so. But Yoosung – _God, poor Yoosung_ – he had practically begged them both to let Emme stay because he thought she could give him answers about his beloved cousin.

Someone was already dead.

_Rika._

_What if it wasn’t a suicide?_ she thought, gnawing at her thumbnail. What if Ray had something to do with that, too?

Rika’s name had been the key to the RFA entrusting her with glimpses into their lives, had allowed her access to their otherwise anonymous fundraising efforts – phone numbers, email addresses, the guestlist...

_Oh, my God._

_The party._

Ray had promised Emme that something big was going to happen at that party.

Ray had made her the bad guy – the _worst_ guy - and now all she could do was go along with it, because his eyes were as keenly focused on her every word as they were on those of the RFA. She couldn’t warn them. She couldn’t ask them for help. Was Ray monitoring her calls the way he was reading their texts and chat logs? There was no way to know for sure.

Emme was trapped. She couldn’t climb out of the rabbit hole - she had fallen far too deep. The only thing she could do now was pretend she didn’t know a thing, keep moving forward, and hope another exit would eventually present itself.

She held one single ember of hope in her hand. Just one, and it was dim.

Ray was working for someone. He had a boss. The person who had him working practically 24/7. The person who had warned Ray that his feelings for Emme were starting to distract him from his duties.

Special Someone.

Emme had to find out what Ray’s relationship to this person was. Was he working _with_ this person or _for_ them? And if he was working for them, was he being coerced? There was a chance Ray could have ended up here the same way Emme had ended up here. Was Ray begging her to stay with him because he needed an ally – someone to help him escape from here? Or was he begging her to stay in the hopes that she would pledge some sort of allegiance to Special Someone and help them achieve whatever goal it was they had in mind when they had conceived this idea of using Emme to infiltrate the RFA?

Truth be told, it didn’t look good. People who are operating under duress don’t normally sit down for tea or have luncheons with the person applying the duress. Not unless they’ve been brainwashed or they’re pretending to play along while plotting their escape in secret, which was what Emme was going to have to start doing from here on out.

The ember in her hands glowed just a little brighter.

_Ray…_

Maybe she could get out of here. Maybe she could save him.

Emme got to her feet and opened the closet door, blinking a few times as her eyes adjusted to the light pouring in from the windows. She left her phone on her bedside table to charge then locked herself in the bathroom and got ready for the day ahead. She had spent most of last night mourning a friendship that could have been all in her head. Ray’s feelings for her had felt genuine. His words, even those just sent through the messenger, felt real. But she couldn’t trust him anymore. Evidently, she couldn’t even trust her own judgement.

Emme prayed that she would be able to unravel what exactly was going on here and secure a way to escape before the party…without letting her blossoming feelings for Ray distract her from her new mission. That was going to be the biggest hurdle. If she fell in love with him, it would cloud her already hazy judgement. She would lose herself. Six innocent people - people she had grown to truly care for - were in danger. If Ray’s intense hatred of them was any indication, the lives of V and Seven in particular could be the most at risk. The dozens of party guests could end up being collateral damage depending on what Special Someone’s endgame was. One person was already dead, and now Emme was questioning whether it was by suicide or murder.

She had gone from not wanting to have anything to do with people ever again to having dozens of them depending on her to keep them safe.

And not a single one of them had any idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading, I'm waving. Hi! It's good to meet you! If you have any constructive criticism, please don't hesitate to leave it for me. It's a challenge for me writing for a character like MC. I guess that's one of the reasons I wanted to do this so badly. I'm trying to use pencil crayons without pressing too hard, rather than markers, if that makes sense. I'm also trying to keep things as in-canon as possible - the extra stuff is what I'd like to think might have been happening behind the scenes - the time between the chatrooms, texts and calls. I'd love your thoughts, if you're willing to give them. I know it takes time out of your day, and you might not want to bother. That's okay, too. I'm just happy you've read as far as you have. Thanks again so much. xo


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thank you so much for reading (if you're here and you see this - HI)! Also as usual, I'd love to hear from you. Not just because it encourages me to keep writing, but also because constructive criticism and/or just your thoughts about the chapters are chicken soup for the soul (so they say). xo

Emme was going to see Ray in person tonight for the first time since she emerged from the mental fog that had kept her from realizing sooner that Jumin, Jaehee, Zen, Yoosung, V and Seven were real people. She was shaking as she got dressed, praying she would be able to carry on a conversation with Ray without him suspecting she’d had her mind blown wide open the night before.

She still had a death grip on that sliver of hope that Ray wasn’t the bad guy. Things looked awful right now, but she was determined to find out everything she could about him before making her final verdict.

Earlier that afternoon she found herself in the middle of another tense conversation between Jumin and V. She was uncomfortable for altogether different reasons this time around. Now that her eyes were open, Jumin’s suspicions of her stung. They were entirely understandable, but it still hurt. He and V talked about their friendship, their childhood, and then Rika came up again and things kind of crumbled.

Despite Emme’s anxiousness, she managed to ask a few innocuous questions – nothing that would reveal too much to Ray. He already knew V and Jumin were friends. Maybe letting him see how good and loyal they were to each other would give him second thoughts about whatever it was he and Special Someone were planning on putting them through. She decided that was something she could do – walk the tightrope between giving Ray little harmless tidbits of info so that he could see that she was still doing the job he’d asked her to do, and showing him through her interactions with the members of the RFA what kind and decent people they really were.

Later, Yoosung and Zen argued over V and Jumin after reading the chat logs. Zen defended V and tried to tell Yoosung to take it easy, but it just made Yoosung increasingly more frustrated. He was incredulous that V still wouldn’t tell him what exactly happened to Rika, and angry with Jumin over what he perceived to be an insensitive refusal to take responsibility for whatever small part the friends may have played in her suicide.

Emme wanted to tell Yoosung that, in her experience, if a person wants to commit suicide, if they’re really intent on doing it, there’s little you can do to stop them unless they’re willing to accept help or you’re watching that person every single moment of every single day. From what Emme was able to deduce, Rika hadn’t given anyone any reason to believe that she was even suffering from depression, let alone considering suicide. There was a time when the people surrounding Emme would have been shocked had she gone through with committing suicide. She was _that_ good at hiding the deterioration of her mental wellbeing behind her mask.

But Emme kept her comments to herself, as she wasn’t sure it was her place. Provoking Yoosung to chew her head off wasn’t conducive to getting him to trust her, and anyway, Yoosung might as well have been screaming “I CAN’T HEAR YOU” while pressing his hands over his ears for all the listening he was willing to do just then. Zen tried his best to calm Yoosung down, but he still left the chatroom believing the entire world was against him.

If Emme’s role in these chats moving forward was going to be trying to showcase the RFA’s sincere care and concern for each other, it didn’t look like any of them were going to make it easy for her today. Thus far Ray had remained blind, perhaps obstinately, to any of the good stuff, choosing instead to zero in on their feelings of resentment and mistrust, and there was a lot of that right now. Emme started worrying that Ray was going to ask her to start exploiting that. She had no idea how she’d be able to worm her way out of it if he did.

If only the RFA knew how much was riding on their just being a little more understanding of each other. Like their lives, and possibly the lives of everyone around them.

She knew most of the strife might be mitigated if V just told Jumin and Yoosung what they wanted to know, principally anything surrounding Rika’s suicide. But if V was going to spill his secrets, it had to be a completely tech-free conversation to keep Ray from gaining more intel about the RFA and passing it along to Special Someone.

When she heard the knock on her door signaling Ray’s arrival, she jumped a little then nervously combed her fingers through her hair. She took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob, willing herself to stop shaking. She wasn’t sure how she was going to feel once she and Ray were finally face to face again. Would she be scared? Angry? Or, despite everything that’s happened, would she melt at the sight of him?

He stood in her doorway with his hands folded in front of him. His hair looked like white, airy feathers, and his strange, unshuttered eyes connected with hers for a moment before he lowered them, a blush rising to his cheeks.

He looked like an angel.

_Dammit._

She noticed his hands were trembling and he was biting his lip.

 _He’s nervous,_ she realized. She’d been staring at him for so long that she forgot to actually invite him in.

“I-I’m so sorry. Um…come in, Ray.” she stammered, standing aside to let him through the door. He let out a sigh, looking relieved.

“Thank you,” he said, a timid smile on his face. He walked past her and stopped at the centre of the room. He started tugging at the hems of his gloves and toying with the cuffs of his jacket as his eyes roved around. She didn’t know what he was looking for. She approached him cautiously, not sure what to make of his anxiousness. Was she doing something she wasn’t aware of that was making him jittery? Was he afraid he’d mess up his mission tonight, whatever that may be, the way she was afraid she might mess up hers?

“Emme…I’m sorry I haven’t been able to visit you. You’ve been stuck inside since you got here. That’s my fault.” He looked at her guiltily, but she smiled, and it wasn’t the kind of smile she had to fake.

“It’s not your fault. You’ve been working. I understand.”

 _You have no idea how much I understand,_ she thought sadly. But the sight of her smile seemed to bring Ray such relief that it left a crack in the wall she’d spent all day trying to erect around her heart.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said, voice soft as a lullaby. “I’m so happy I finally have a little time to spend with you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” she replied, hating herself a little for meaning it. This was going to be even tougher than she thought. He glanced over her shoulder at the flowers he had brought her, still sitting in a vase on her bedside table. His face lit up at the sight of them, and the wall around her heart took another hit.

“It’s really nice out tonight, and I thought maybe we could go for a walk. You’ve only seen the garden through these windows. We could get some fresh flowers to replace the ones by your bedside.”

_Yes!_

Emme was _hoping_ he’d give her an outdoor tour tonight. She’d have to view the building properly from the outside and keep an eye out for an escape route just in case her mission to save the RFA (and herself for that matter) went completely south.

“I’d love to go for a walk, Ray, thank you. But you don’t have to replace those flowers. They’re beautiful, and they smell wonderful. I think the scent has been helping me fall asleep at night.”

Still gazing at the flowers, he tilted his head to one side and frowned. “They’re starting to wilt.”

“A little, I guess,” she said, trying to see what he was seeing. “But if we discarded everything that exhibited even the slightest flaw, the world would be a pretty cold and heartless place, don’t you think? And who says a little wilting is even a flaw? The petals soften, and their edges darken like they’ve been touched with a paintbrush. They’re still beautiful, just in another way.” Why was she being so defensive about the flowers? “Besides, I love them and…” her voice trailed off when she turned and saw that Ray was staring at her curiously.

_I’m talking too much. He thinks I’m crazy._

“I love them,” she said again, quietly. “Thank you so much for giving them to me, Ray.”

He smiled shyly and tugged again at the hem of one of his gloves. “I hope you like the garden. We can walk for a bit, and then I’ll take you to my favourite spot. The moonlight makes the petals on the flowers there glow. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to spend time with you like this again, so I kind of want to make it special. The memory will last longer that way.”

It was Emme’s turn to look at him curiously. He started blushing again.

“That’s not to say that the time we’ve managed to spend together so far hasn’t been special to me. It has. Even when it’s on the messenger, or listening to your voice in my ear when I get a few minutes to talk to you on the phone,” he explained.

Emme recognized the look on his face as he spoke – mild panic at the thought that you’re probably talking too much and not making any sense. Or making too much sense but still sounding like a lunatic because you’re expressing feelings you’re not sure the other person wants to be privy to. She’d had that same look on her face many, many times. In fact, she had that same exact look on her face just three minutes ago.

“I think about you all the time. Sometimes I try really hard not to, like when I’m working, or when I need to sleep, but you pop into my head anyway. I like you being there.”

Emme smiled in spite of herself. “In your head?”

He nodded, still looking worried. “Yes. In my head.”

She silently headed across the room to the door and he watched her, looking perplexed. Wrapping her hand around the gilded doorknob, she looked back over her shoulder at him, gesturing with her chin for him to follow her.

“Shall we?” she asked.

He chuckled, all the tension in his body seeming to fade away.

“Yes, please.” he replied.

When Emme agreed to see Ray tonight, she felt like a spy about to carry out a reconnaissance mission. But now, to her consternation, she felt like a girl about to go out on a date.

**oooOOOOooo**

Emme had underestimated exactly how much Ray knew about botany. He knew everything about the garden down to almost the tiniest detail. If a plant or flower looked “off” to him, or there was some sort of new development from the last time he saw it, he’d take a small pad of paper and a pencil out of the pocket of his morning coat and start scribbling down notes. He told her that he’d recently been looking into the symbolism behind certain flowers. “The language of flowers” he called it. He had managed to memorize a lot of them, so as they strolled through the garden, Emme would point out a flower she found particularly interesting or pretty and Ray would tell her what its hidden meaning was.

“I live near a park that’s filled with those ones over there – all different colours,” she said.

“Oh, those are hydrangeas,” he said, looking more comfortable in his skin than she’d ever seen him. “At first glance people tend to mix them up with snowball viburnum bushes, but they’re a lot different if you look closer. Hydrangeas come in all sorts of colours, and they have all sorts of meanings. What colour are the ones in your park?”

Emme closed her eyes for a moment, trying to remember. It seemed like forever ago that she had actually walked through that park simply to enjoy being outside. She cut through the park on her way to and from the grocery store, and getting groceries was one of the chores she liked least so she usually wanted the whole thing to be over with as quickly as possible. She felt Ray’s eyes on her as she tried to conjure up the image of the flowers – the hydrangeas.

“Not as many colours as I’m sure you have here. White and blue for sure, and pink…I think I like the purple ones the best.”

Ray thought for a moment, biting his lip – a habit of his she was starting to find adorable.

She had to accept the reality that she was just really, _really_ terrible at this “not letting your emotions affect your judgement” thing. She was trying her damndest to assign things she was impressed with or admired about him to the darker, sketchier stuff she suspected – things she needed to learn more about before she could start trusting him again. Like, for instance, the fact that he was so good at memorizing stuff. She didn’t know much about hacking, but wouldn’t that require a really good memory? Remembering all those numbers and letters and…yeah, okay - she didn’t know a thing about hacking.

Everything about him seemed to glimmer in the moonlight. His eyes, pale skin, and hair made him look elfin and otherworldly. She had thought his hair was white, similar to Zen’s, but on closer inspection, and in this natural light, one could see that it was actually a very, very pale pink. The very tips of his hair were a darker, more vivid pink. She thought the tips were intentional accents, but what if he had bleached his hair white and it just didn’t completely take? White and red made pink. If you were going to make a red wall white, you’d need white primer and then however many layers of paint it would take to keep the red from showing through. Was the hair colour a fashion choice or had he dyed it to change or cover up his true identity?

Ray was handsome – no, _beautiful_ \-- in the same outfit he’d been wearing the day she’d first met him. He looked like something out of time, like he’d stepped out of the ornate, antique frame of some old painting. She never saw him wearing anything else, no matter the time day. He didn’t exactly look uncomfortable in the clothes, but it wasn’t like he was a butler – he worked with computers at a desk practically twenty-four hours a day. Could it be that it was a uniform? If it was, it was the most elaborate uniform she had ever seen.

On their way here she spotted more people wandering the halls wearing the same black robe the man guarding her door last night had been wearing. She was starting to wonder if the place she’d been calling home these past couple of days was some sort of religious monastery, and Ray – _Mister_ Ray – was some kind of superordinate. That would explain why he was sitting down with Special Someone for tea and crumpets.

“A yearning to understand someone.”

The sound of Ray’s voice effectively pulled her out of the hedge maze twisting and turning endlessly in her mind.

“Hm?”

“Purple hydrangeas are a symbol of a person’s yearning to understand someone,” he explained.

 _Fitting_ , she thought.

He frowned, then very quietly said, “You’re bored, aren’t you? I’m boring you.”

Emme’s eyes widened. “No, not even a little bit! I was just thinking how odd it is that all hydrangeas don’t have the same meaning.”

“They might be the same flower, but the colours make them markedly different. It makes sense that their meanings would be different, too. For instance, blue hydrangeas represent gratitude, while white ones symbolize vanity and boastfulness.”

 _Zen._ Emme thought, almost chuckling.

“Colours don’t necessarily have the same meaning either. It depends on the flower. A purple hydrangea signifies wanting to learn everything you can about another person, but a purple rose implies love or enchantment at first sight. I guess those two things could be considered the same thing. I’d have to think on that,” Ray explained, albeit quieter and with far less confidence than he had moments ago. He averted his gaze and gripped the little notepad in his hand tightly.

_Way to go, Emme._

“There are some roses there behind you. Orange ones, blue ones…”

She hadn’t meant to make him feel like he was boring her. On the contrary, Emme found everything he was saying genuinely interesting. She could listen to him talk about the language of flowers all day. She could listen to him talk about pretty much anything all day. But she also had a job to do, and she couldn’t help but be distracted by that.

Was Emme’s mission distracting her from Ray, or was Ray distracting Emme from her mission?

_Get your head screwed on properly. This is not supposed to be some sort of romantic rendezvous. There are people somewhere out there depending on you, whether they know it or not. You need to maintain your purpose here._

_But, God…_ When Ray was talking about something he loved or knew a lot about, his eyes would positively sparkle, and it made her heart beat like a rabbit’s. It hurt her to think he was feeling badly about himself, and that she was the cause of it. She wanted to see those eyes sparkle again. In that moment, much to her shame and frustration, that was the only thing that mattered to her.

“The same shade of blue as your boutonniere,” Emme remarked, pointing at the rose and baby’s breath that were wrapped up together with a purple ribbon and fastened to Ray’s lapel. He looked down at it, touching it gently with his gloved fingertips.

“Yes. Though this is made of silk. I try not to pick the flowers if I can avoid it. They’re living things, after all.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he quickly slipped the notepad and pencil back in his jacket pocket and held his quivering hands up in front of him, looking abashed at what he seemed to think was some sort of faux pas. _Gosh, we make quite the pair, don’t we?_

“That doesn’t mean I’m sorry I brought you those roses! It’s just that I knew you wouldn’t be able to come here to the garden right away, so I wanted to bring a bit of the garden to you.”

“That makes them all the more special, Ray,” she said as calmingly as she could. His gaze met hers again and she tried to hold onto it for as long as she could. “But you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do just to make me happy. I love the roses, but they look just as beautiful from my window as they do in my room.”

“Thank you,” he said, a small, bashful smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

“What does the blue rose mean?” she asked.

“Oh, um…Unattainable. Unique. Mysterious.”

_Perfect._

“Unattainable?”

Why did that come out sounding so sad?

Ray blushed. “It used to mean ‘you can’t catch me’. No one can hurt me if they can’t find me.”

 _That must be the hacker in him talking_ , she thought.

“But now…”

“But now?” she asked gently.

“Now I think it means no one else can have me, because…” he looked away, letting his voice trail off as he got down on one knee in front of one of the rosebushes, suddenly pretending he was too busy studying it to finish his sentence. He touched the petals of a particularly lush orange rose. She lowered herself down beside him, her knees sinking into the soft, green grass. She reached tentatively for his hand, slowly gliding the pads of her fingers across his open palm to weave them through his. He stiffened, but this time he didn’t pull away. He carefully curled his own long, elegant fingers around her hand, squeezing just the tiniest bit.

“Because I want to belong to you, Emme,” he said softly, eagerly. Each word hummed with sincerity. Her heart ached for him and she found herself blinking back the prickling of tears.

He looked across at her, his beguiling mint-green eyes were misty with longing and sadness.

“Please let me be yours.”

**oooOOOOooo**

Once the chill in the air started to have a visible effect on her, Ray asked Emme if he could walk her back to her room. She cursed herself for not being able to control her shivering. She wasn’t ready to go inside yet. She still had so many questions for Ray and she needed at least one more stroll around the garden to get answers out of him without it coming off like she was grilling him. She needed to tread lightly – she didn’t want Ray to start guessing she knew anything.

The voice in the back of her mind had to keep reminding her not to discount how scared that man had sounded through her bedroom door – the one who had referred to Ray as “Mister Ray”.

_“Please don’t tell Mister Ray. Please.”_

She didn’t want to believe that Ray would hurt her, or anyone else for that matter. She _couldn’t_ believe it, not after the way he had looked at her tonight while asking her to accept him with such earnestness. But the way he spoke about Seven and V – he wasn’t just angry with them. The second he started talking about them, his voice would change. If their names came up in the messenger, his words on the screen would burn her eyes and the tips of her fingers with an animosity that was almost tangible. What could those men have possibly done to him to have such an effect on him?

If Ray suspected even for a second that Emme might betray him, would she find herself on the other end of that kind of anger?

_“I want to belong to you, Emme.”_

She had always wanted to feel like she belonged somewhere. A place where she could be comfortable being her whole self – a girl who liked to stay at home and watch bad TV, or cry when she felt like crying without worrying that her feelings might be a burden on others. She was starting to believe it was a real possibility that a somewhere like that was going to be wherever Ray was.

But Ray was here. And she didn’t know where “here” was. Though she was starting to get an inkling.

Tonight, when she asked him more about his work, he was vague. He did, however, start using words that continued to fuel her suspicions that this building was the headquarters for some sort of religious denomination. “What _we_ do here is…” and “There are still people out there who need _our_ help…”

What religion, though? She couldn’t think of any that involved wearing creepy black robes. As for the building, were those _eyeballs_ adorning the finials and that trim over there? What the hell was _that_ about?

Emme wasn’t a religious person herself, so maybe there were perfectly good explanations for everything. But Ray’s role in all of this – getting a stranger to infiltrate a chatroom filled with people he hates so he can spy on them, talking about what an asset someone like Jumin would be to whoever “us” was supposed to be…

Why wouldn’t Special Someone just pluck a couple of sheep out of the flock to send over to C&R and meet with Jumin in person if they wanted him to convert so badly to…whatever this religion was supposed to be? Why the spying and the phone-tapping and…? Unless maybe this wasn’t a legitimate religion.

_Oh, my God. What if it’s some sort of crazy –_

“Woah, watch your feet!”

Emme stumbled over a pile of tools sitting on a board of wood that was sticking out from under some shrubs. She had been so lost in thought again that she hadn’t been paying attention to where she was walking. When she looked up, she saw building equipment and supplies littered all over the place. Ray looked as surprised to see the mess as she was.

“I’m so sorry. The exterior of the building is complete, but the workers are still finishing up some construction in the basement. I told them to clean up at the end of the day, but it looks like they didn’t take my request very seriously. Are you alright?” Ray asked, concern etched across his angelic face.

“I’m fine. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she replied, steadying herself and flashing him an awkward smile.

Ray’s brows knitted together. “Are you sure? You look so pale all of a sudden.”

_Just tossing it out there, but maybe it’s because it just dawned on me that I might be part of the machinations of a religious cult’s efforts to recruit new members._

The whole thing sounded insane, even to herself. She knew that. But the pieces didn’t fit together any other way. It wasn’t like she was forcing them together just to get the narrative she wanted, because what she wanted was for Ray to be the boy she was falling in love with…

_Falling in love with…?_

_Focus, Emme._

What she wanted was for Ray to be the boy she was falling in love with, except without the whole dangerous-hacker-who-might-also-be-a-high-ranking-member-of-a-shady-religious-cult thing. Was that too much to ask?

As Ray surveyed the small disaster area in front of them, his expression turned dark and icy, and his eyes narrowed. “I’ll have to have another chat with those workers.”

Okay, apparently it _was_ too much to ask.

Then, because _of course_ things could always get worse, Ray gave Emme the “good news” that she would soon be free to visit the garden and explore the rest of the property whenever she wanted to, “once all the requirements have been met and you’ve signed the contract.”

Up until the moment he said that, she’d had no idea there was some sort of rule prohibiting her from leaving her floor. She hadn’t really tried to go anywhere. The thought of one of those black-hooded figures swooping in and spiriting her back to her room if she happened to wander too close to a flight of stairs was scary as hell. Almost as scary as –

“Contract?”

_Something tells me he isn’t offering me his hand in marriage._

“It’s not something we need to talk about now,” Ray replied, almost missing every one of the facial cues silently screaming at him _NO, LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS NOW._

Almost.

“Emme, I want you to be one of us. I want you to stay here…with me. If you want that, too, I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen.”

It shouldn’t have surprised her that he’d try to persuade her to join this…

_…cult, Emme. It’s a cult. Be a grownup and call it what it is._

It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She stood in front of him with wide eyes and her mouth slightly agape - not exactly the picture of grace. The corners of Ray’s mouth slipped at the sight of it. He reached for her hand but hesitated just short of touching her when she couldn’t control the shudder that ran through her. He brought his hand to his chest and held it over his heart as though he were trying to protect it.

“I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” he said solemnly. He was hoping for the best, but she could see in his eyes that he had lived a lifetime’s worth of hoping for the best only to instead be dealt the worst too many times. His shoulders slumped and the light in his eyes grew dim. “I just…I want you to think about it. Please. I promise you’ll be happy here. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.”

 _Except tell me the truth_ , she thought miserably.

At the very least, she wanted Ray to stop gaslighting her. It would be a start, wouldn’t it? Every time he referred to the members of the RFA as AI’s, it wrecked her. How could he expect to have any sort of relationship with her, be it romantic or otherwise, if he kept lying to her? What if she accepted his invitation and stayed? He would have to know that she would find out what he was up to eventually. Maybe he thought she’d grow so attached to him that by the time all of his secrets were revealed, it wouldn’t matter to her anymore.

“You’re shaking,” he said, turning away. “Let’s get you inside.”

They walked back in silence. Once they reached her room, she almost slipped through the door without saying a word. There was an ache in her throat and she knew that if she opened her mouth to speak even a single word, it would turn into a string of sobs. She couldn’t cry in front of him. It would make him suspicious. That meant that, as much as it pained her, she was about to let him leave her tonight thinking he wasn’t doing enough to make her want to stay with him.

_All I want is for you to stop lying to me._

He was already running himself ragged doing Special Someone’s bidding while also trying to fit in time to care for her and make her feel at home in this strange place. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. This place was his entire world, and he was over-extending himself because he so desperately wanted to make her a part of that world. Emme didn’t think she was worth all this trouble but, for whatever reason, Ray did.

She put her hand on the doorknob and squeezed her eyes shut. He took the hint. She heard his shoes squeak on the marble floor as he turned to walk away.

_Dammit._

Letting go of the doorknob, she whirled around and grabbed the cuff of his sleeve to stop him. He spun to face her, then took several wobbly footfalls back. His eyes grew to the size of saucers and all the colour drained from his face. He looked like he thought she was going to hit him. She let go of him with a small, shocked cry. What would possibly make him think she would ever hit him?

Neither of them moved at first, but after a beat or two, they both started breathing again, slow and steady. She was about to say something to break the silence, though she wasn’t exactly sure what, but he ended up speaking first.

“I messed everything up, didn’t I? I was too eager, and I ruined everything.” His voice cracked, “I always ruin everything.”

She realized he was trying not to cry, too. She glanced over his shoulder. At the end of the hallway were two hooded “believers” watching them with curious eyes. One was Believer…C…something. They probably couldn’t hear what Ray was saying, but she didn’t want to take the chance. She moved closer to him so that they were standing toe to toe. She was immediately caught up in those mesmerizing eyes of his, and that scent – the combination of flowers, earth, and impending storm. The sudden desire to kiss him made her light-headed.

“You didn’t ruin anything, Ray. I just –”

Maybe it was worth the risk. Maybe she could just tell him what she knew, then once it was out in the open…

_No. You can’t do that. Not until you find out what Special Someone’s plans are for the RFA. Not until you can be sure they’ll all be safe._

Her shoulders shrugged in resignation. “I just don’t want us to move too fast. The only thing that can mess things up is if we’re reckless with each other. I shouldn’t have done what I almost did just now. I was going to shut you out instead of just being honest with you. I’ve made that mistake before with…” _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…_ “…with my friends…and I lost them. I don’t want that to happen to us. That’s why I don’t want to keep secrets – because I like you so very much, Ray, and that’s what people do…when they really like each other.”

Ray bit his lip, looking like he was trying really hard to hear her. Emme was hoping he was reading between the lines. Very thick, black lines on very bright, white paper.

“Emme…”

_Please, Ray…_

“One of the reasons I really wanted to see you tonight is because I’m afraid I might lose you…”

_Please, please, please…_

“…to the characters in the game.”

It was like someone poured a bucket of ice water on her. She somehow managed to push another sob deep down into her stomach. She knew the second Ray was gone and she was back to being alone in her room she was going to completely fall apart.

_I’m afraid you might lose me to the game, too._

“I know that sounds silly, but…”

She couldn’t bear to hear the rest, so she just focused all her attention on trying to keep from emotionally imploding. He wasn’t making eye contact, which suited her just fine because she couldn’t bring herself to do it either. She waited until he was done saying whatever it was he was saying, then she said, “It’s getting late, and you must be exhausted. Don’t worry about anything tonight. I’m not going anywhere.”

_At least not until I see this whole thing through._

For the second time that evening, she stopped herself from letting him leave.

“Ray, can I ask you something before you go?”

“Yes,” he answered, but he looked apprehensive.

“Why do you wear those gloves? I never see you without them.”

She wasn’t only asking because they were both on the verge of tears and could use the change of topic. She found she was sincerely curious.

Ray glanced down at his hands, looking self-conscious. “It’s because I bite my nails. The gloves were my boss’ idea. I try to keep them on all the time to keep me from doing it, but it makes it harder to type, so I end up taking them off for a while and chewing my nails anyway without realizing it.” He slipped his hands behind his back. “I put them back on right away, though. I don’t want to gross anyone out.”

Emme held up her own hands for him to see. Her nails were practically gnawed down to the quick.

Ray looked at them with a peculiar sort of wonder. Or was it revulsion? The pregnant pause made her uncomfortable.

“Maybe I should start wearing gloves, too,” she mumbled. She had only wanted to show him that he didn’t have to hide anything from her. Now she just felt repulsive.

Ray removed one of his gloves and held his hand out to her. Just like the rest of him, his fingers were long, slender, and elegant. And just like hers, the nails were chewed up something awful.

They did a wordless but very thorough side-by-side comparison.

Dreadful. Both sets of nails looked just dreadful. They started to laugh.

Looking reassured, Ray finally spoke as he pulled his glove back over his hand. “Thank you, Emme. Thank you for going to see the garden with me. Thank you for talking with me, and for your kindness and understanding.”

Emme’s heart couldn’t take much more of these hills and valleys. She just wanted to stop thinking, fold herself up in his arms and stay that way until all her pieces stitched themselves back together again.

She just wanted everything - everything but their hearts – to stop.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did something incredibly stupid when I posted this chapter - I left out the first couple of pages. They're in there now. Ugh. When I originally wrote the notes for this one, I apologized for any typos or grammatical snags. Little did I know I'd left out ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS. They're there now, opening the chapter like they're supposed to. O_o Lordy, I'm such a bowling pin sometimes.

After crying her way through a long bath, Emme was lying in bed and staring at the phone on her bedside table. She didn’t want to check in on the chatroom, but she knew Ray would be anxious to catch up on his work after spending so much time with her in the garden, and that included reading the chat logs. For a couple of hours now, Yoosung would be home from his classes, Zen would be drinking beer and taking post-shower selfies, Jumin would be enjoying a glass of wine and tending to Elizabeth the 3rd and, well, Jaehee would be working overtime because it seemed like she was just doomed to forever be up to her armpits in work. As for Seven, he was probably still trying to locate the hacker.

_Well, my non-fictional friend, just a short while ago he was in a garden talking about flowers with a gullible, heartsick idiot._

Seven popped up in the chatroom, seemingly in a good mood, which caught her off-guard. He asked her about her evening. She mentioned getting to spend time in a garden – maybe it was a useful hint that would help him locate her, maybe it was a useless nothing. When he told her that he was glad she had access to a garden, she chose to take that to mean he was making a note of it.

“I have a question to ask you, M.”

_Uh-oh._

“Did you do something today to make someone happy?”

Odd question, but then look who it was coming from. If Ray was her White Rabbit, Seven was the Mad Hatter.

“I think so, yes,” she replied. It was the truth. She wondered how Ray would interpret that.

“Great! Make sure you do the same thing tomorrow…and the day after that…and the day after that. Reach out to someone with a loving heart, maybe a friend who’s feeling hurt or sad. One kind word could change a person’s future.”

Emme almost looked over her shoulder to see if there were cameras on her. Was he watching her? Was he monitoring her interactions with Ray the way Ray was monitoring her interactions with the RFA? Or maybe he was just stealing cheesy, inspirational quotes from some influencer’s Instagram account.

When V turned up and Seven told him he had some info, Emme closed her eyes and held the phone against her forehead as though she could somehow telepathically communicate with the two of them. She started typing something totally off-topic to throw the conversation off its tracks, but Seven typed like a guy composing his will in a house on fire. Before she could hit send, he had already fired off about eight or nine messages.

“I analyzed the log a moment ago and made a chart. The average log-in rate has risen by – BOOM! -- 137.6%!”

He called it “The M Effect” and Emme sputtered, not knowing whether she should laugh or start crying again. She had no idea if he was joking or not. She didn’t know a thing about charts or log-in rates, or even math for that matter. Ray would know if Seven was kidding or not. If it wasn’t a joke and the RFA were logging in more frequently just to learn more about her, V in particular, then Ray and Special Someone were getting exactly what they wanted – their plan was working.

When V told her he was going to leave the chat so he could call her she tried to dissuade him, but he insisted. When her phone started buzzing in her hand, she hesitated to answer it. It was going to be the first time she was going to speak to him on the phone since she realized he was a real person. She was nervous on the phone on a normal day. Now she couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t end up dead if she said the wrong thing. That was going to make it a touch more stressful.

 _It’s a miracle I haven’t developed an ulcer_ , she thought. She answered the call and immediately started gnawing at her thumbnail. _You can’t talk with your finger in your mouth, dummy._

 _Yeesh_. Maybe she really _did_ need gloves.

Thankfully, the call was brief, and V did most of the talking. He asked her if she was alone (no), if she was safe (yes), and if she was receiving any frequent visitors (no…?). It was like a true or false test from hell. He told her to let him know if she started to think she might be in danger.

“If something happens, or if there’s something you need to tell me…”

_I can’t._

Only three things kept her from drowning herself in her very fancy bathtub.

The first was that she was almost certain Ray was incapable of hurting her – at least for now. When she grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, he reeled back like she was going to strike him. He literally wouldn’t even pluck the petals off a flower.

The second thing was that V clearly knew something was going on. At least one of the secrets he was keeping from the other members of the RFA was being kept for the sake of her safety. That was a pretty huge load off her mind. She didn’t care how V knew about Ray’s visits – all that was important for now was that he knew. It meant that if she suddenly lost total access to the messenger app, someone would notice. Someone would look for her.

She might actually be able to get a little sleep tonight. It might have been the first time a phone call reduced her stress rather than increased it, even under these absurd circumstances. She was a little proud of herself for that.

_One small step for Emme, one giant step for…also Emme._

The final thing that brought her a small measure of comfort was that she was truly starting to believe that Ray wasn’t trying to hide the fact that this building housed a cult. Of course he’d never _call_ it a cult. For him it was probably a lifestyle and this place was a haven for like-minded people. It sounded like he truly believed he was helping people. How he was helping them, she had no idea. That was something she anticipated she’d find out soon. He hadn’t outright lied to her by telling her that he and Special Someone were running a bed & breakfast here. The robes, the rules, the recruiting – he wasn’t hiding any of that from her because it was normal for him. He lived here. This was his home, and the work he did for Special Someone was his livelihood.

Emme resolved to close the messenger after one last peek in the chatroom. She wasn’t surprised when she saw that Jaehee had logged in. Emme dropped the phone on her face a couple of times, but she was happy she didn’t miss her. Chatting with the beleaguered personal assistant always had such a calming effect on Emme, which was puzzling given she was always under such pressure…and piles, and piles of work.

Maybe it was because they were both women? No, it was something more than that. Emme envied her. She was a fully functioning grownup who handled stress like a superhero. She found joy in the simplest things – a good cup of coffee, watching a favourite musical on DVD, or refreshing her desktop wallpaper using Zen’s latest selfie. And she cared for her friends – yes, _friends_. Even Jumin. Whether she was hen-pecking them, patiently doling out advice she knew they weren’t going to take, or quietly tolerating their incessant teasing about her serious demeanour or inability to take a joke, they were her friends and she watched out for them. None of these people were just members of a fundraising effort – they were a family. They were loyal to each other. And even though Jaehee had the least in common with all of them, she still managed to be the glue holding them all together.

After a little small talk, Emme was basking in the normalcy when Jaehee told her she’d been approached by two men for what she thought were directions. It turned out they were religious missionaries who wanted to “save her soul”.

_Oh, shit. I can’t protect any of them if they’re being snatched right off the street._

She was going to ask Jaehee if they happened to be wearing black robes but thought better of it. Emme was still supposed to be thinking this was all fiction. Introducing real world details into this theoretically fictional one would tip Ray off for sure.

Thankfully, Jaehee ended up answering the question without her needing to ask.

“They looked totally ordinary on the outside, but then out of nowhere they started saying things like ‘Your soul is screaming to be rescued from its oppression!’ and “Salvation is the way and the light!’”

Jaehee was incensed by the entire episode.

If Special Someone had any plans to try and recruit Jaehee, they were going to have their work cut out for them.

**oooOOOOooo**

Emme groaned when her phone alerted her to someone logging into the messenger’s chatroom.

_For God’s sake, it’s after 1AM._

When she saw that it was Ray, though, she sat up in bed, shaking off her grogginess and fumbling to keep the phone from slipping out of her cold, clammy hands.

He uploaded a picture of an orange rose – the same orange rose from the garden that he had been pretending to study when she reached out and touched his hand. Her stomach did a little flip at the sight of it.

“I was thinking about what you said – about how we should be honest with each other.”

_Oh, my God…_

He was going to do it. He was finally going to tell her the truth about the RFA. She held her breath and for a few glorious seconds she imagined the next time they would be in this room together, and the dozens of ways she would show him he was forgiven.

 _This is it,_ her heart leapt joyously. _This has to be it._

It wasn’t it.

“When we were saying goodnight, I wanted to touch you. I wanted to stop you from going back into that room.”

Emme decided he was like some sort of deceptively seraphic vampire. Every time he told another lie it felt like fangs, sleek and razor-sharp, would slip from their sheaths to penetrate the muscled wall of her heart. She wanted to cry out from the pain, struggle against him, against her feelings for him. But then more words would come, tender truths to soothe the sting of the lies, entrancing her and filling her head with champagne bubbles, leaving room for little else.

_Goddammit, Ray._

She was trapped between two unyielding certainties – one being that letting her guard down right now would be a dangerous mistake, and the other being that she probably wasn’t going to be able to stop herself from making it. She whispered her next few words as she typed them.

“You wanted to stop me?”

“Yes, but I don’t want you to worry, Emme. I won’t ever do anything you don’t want me to do. Still, it’s all I’ve been able to think about. You touched my hand, and it made me nervous at first. I’m not used to being touched. I don’t usually like it.”

A long pause. Then…

“But I liked it. I wasn’t expecting that. Forgive me.”

Emme’s brows knitted together. “Forgive you for wanting to touch me? For wanting me to stay with you a little longer?”

“Both, I think. That’s weird, right? I’m such an idiot sometimes.”

She smiled to herself. _Ever the gentleman._ She started typing again, knowing he’d be waiting on tenterhooks for her reassurance. “It’s not weird. But you know you don’t need to apologize for your feelings, right?”

_Maybe you should give yourself a break and stop apologizing for yours, Emme._

Last night she had wanted to wrap herself up in him, to slip her arms around his waist, beneath that magenta morning coat, and curl up inside of it. She wanted to close her eyes, press her ear to his chest and listen to his heart beating. She wanted him to touch her, preferably without the gloves on, because she was as good at keeping him out of her head as he was at keeping her out of his.

Before Ray was able to reply, her fingers moved at the speed of Seven.

“If you had tried to stop me from going, I think I would have stayed.”

Another very long pause. Much longer than the first.

“So…our hearts are in the same place, then.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, a second alongside the bridge of her nose. She lay down on her side, staring at the phone and wishing Ray was there in its place. Would it be so bad to delude herself for just a little while that they could be a normal couple?

“If I could create a world, one for just the two of us…If I could get into your head…”

“You _are_ in my head, Ray.”

“I’m not supposed to be thinking about you so much. I have so much work to do, and so do you.”

 _Please don’t start talking about that now_ , Emme thought, pressing her lips together.

“The party will happen, and the game will be over. We’ll be able to spend time together.”

Emme turned her face into the pillow. She wanted to scream. Instead, she gathered a large bunch of her blankets into one arm and crushed them to her. It was as close to a reassuring hug as she was going to get for the foreseeable future.

_We can have that world. We can. I just need you to tell me the truth, and then I’ll do everything in my power to get us out of here. We’ll never be alone again. Just. Tell. Me. The. Truth._

It wasn’t ever going to happen, was it? She was going to have to leave him, and he’d tear himself apart trying to figure out why. But what else could she do? He had breathed new life into her. She missed her apartment. She wanted to open all the curtains and let in the sun. She wanted to walk through the little garden near her building again, but this time she’d stop to learn the language of the flowers. Ray cared about her wellbeing, and now she cared about it, too. She was going to break one of his promises, but keep another. She was going to take care of herself just like he wanted.

She took a few deep breaths before looking at her phone again. It didn’t get better.

“You just need to keep aiming for the good ending. That means making sure the RFA holds the party.”

She yanked her head out of the clouds and got back into Im Sang-mi mode.

Ray has been watching the RFA for a long time. He wasn’t getting to know them through her. He knew their backgrounds. He knew what he perceived to be their flaws. Tonight he was fixated on Yoosung. He knew more personal details about him than any of the other members. Maybe she had been worrying about the wrong people this entire time. Maybe it wasn’t V and Seven who were in the most danger, but Jumin and Yoosung. Emme could understand why a cult would want to recruit Jumin. He was wealthy. He had connections. He was driven and had the ability to influence hundreds of people. But why would Special Someone be interested in Yoosung? Yoosung was kind of a mess. A loveable, puppy-like mess, but a mess nonetheless.

“You can save him, Emme. You can save them all.”

She had no choice but to continue playing along.

“I’ll do my best.”

He used an adorable little emoji to express his pleasure.

Sweet candy. Bitter centre. Shell that could break teeth.

“Do you like surprises?”

 _Not anymore,_ Emme thought.

“I have a surprise planned for the characters in the game.”

_Oh, crap._

“Specifically 707. Keep an eye on the messenger tomorrow. It’ll be fun. Promise.”

Welp, that answered the “who was the in most danger” question. No one was safer than anyone else.

_Surprises really, really suck._

She was too tired to think, but now she most definitely had no choice but to see this conversation through to the end. She was about to ask him to elaborate on the “surprise”, but his next message popped up before she could hit “send”.

“Emme, we can save you, too.”

_What._

“We want to help you find your happiness.”

Acidic juices thickened in her mouth and a blistering ache began to grow in her gut.

“What do you mean?”

“When I asked you to stay, I mentioned a contract. It’s a little more complicated than just signing a piece of paper, but I can help you with all that. There’s an enrollment process. I can help you with that, too. You’ll become a permanent resident here.”

_No, no, no! It’s too soon!_

She had no fully formed plan in her head. She still had no idea where she was. She didn’t even know the layout of this place. She needed more time.

She started typing again. Her hands were weak, and it slowed her down considerably.

“What’s the enrollment process?”

“We hold a ceremony to induct you into our family…”

_Shitshitshitshitshit…_

“Then we plant what we call a ‘seed of happiness’ in you…and it grows inside you and bears fruit –”

Emme sucked in a breath and flung her phone as far away from her body as she could, her eyes wide as saucers. She had only known him for a short time, yes, but until just now he’d never said anything so –

_…insane._

_He’s insane._

_No, not insane._

_Brainwashed._

“Plant a seed of happiness”?

_What the hell could that mean?_

Were they going to drug her? Was that part of the ceremony? Was the “seed” he referred to supposed to be some kind of drug?

_I mean, that’s the only thing that makes sense._

Or what if the ceremony was to marry her off to Special Someone and she’d become one of, like, fifty wives and she’d have to bear a bunch of little cult babies –

_Okay, calm down. Back up to the drug thing._

The drug thing made sense. It would explain all of Ray’s headaches. He had told her he would frequently get sick. And he talked about all the pills he had to take.

_Is it the pills?_

No. It can’t be the pills. He said he took the pills to get rid of the headaches. Whatever was giving him the headaches was the problem. Though she supposed staring at computer screens all day and night on no sleep would probably give him a lot of headaches.

Okay, but if you drug someone out of their mind, you could probably get them to do anything you ask them to – even forgo eating and sleeping. If someone told you that the key to escaping your dismal life and finding happiness came in the form of one magical little pill, you’d take it, wouldn’t you?

_A seed of happiness._

She buried her face in her hands. She knew most cults targeted the emotionally vulnerable – people who were predisposed to manipulation. People like Ray. People like Yoosung.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

_People like me._

She wasn’t here purely by accident – she had been targeted. She lived alone, she had alienated herself from friends and family, and she had lost any and all interest in self-preservation. _No one would notice if I just disappeared one day._ But someone would’ve had to have been observing her for a while to know all that. The thought that someone had been lurking in the shadows, following her, studying her long before she first logged into that unknown app completely freaked her out. Well, she was already freaked out, but this turned it up to a deafening frequency.

Yoosung was mourning Rika’s death. He wanted answers to questions his friends were practically forbidding him to even ask. He was angry, hurt, and disillusioned. From the sounds of it, his entire identity revolved around Rika and the life she wanted him to have. He relied on her to make all his decisions for him, and now she was gone, leaving him adrift. The one person he could tether himself to, the only other person who could possibly understand the depth of his loss, was V, and that guy was Rika’s diary with an unbreakable lock on it.

And Ray…

Ray was the poster child for emotional vulnerability. That fearful look in his eyes when Emme grabbed at his sleeve to keep him from walking away was branded into her memory. _He’s been abused. He’s a victim of abuse._ But was that abuse in the past, or was it still happening? And who was the abuser?

In short, the three of them were perfectly ripe for the recruiting.

Ray was working _for_ Special Someone. He was a subordinate. Cult leaders don’t brainwash themselves. He wasn’t a leader - he was a follower and based on all that wacky talk about planting seeds and bearing fruit, someone must have messed him up really badly to get him to do that kind of following.

_If you don’t get back to that messenger, he’s going to get worried. Worried enough to come and check on you in person, and you’re not even close to being ready for that._

How far would he be willing to let this happy family of his go to make her a part of it? Would he let them drug her? Would he let them violate her that way?

Well, yes - of course he would. _Because he thinks he’s saving you. He wants you to be happy, and he’s been programmed to think this “seed of happiness” is the only way he can make that happen._

Emme swung her legs out from under the covers and padded across the floor, following the trajectory of her phone when she threw it. She found it by almost stepping on it. She wiped her eyes and her nose on her sleeve and mentally braced herself for whatever messages Ray had left waiting for her.

“Emme, I have to go. Something’s going on with the server. I don’t want it to interfere with your gameplay.”

She heaved a sigh of relief, though it was a very shaky one. She wouldn’t have had any idea how to reply if Ray had been able to stick around for one.

“It’s supposed to rain during the day tomorrow, but maybe we can go for another walk in the evening if I get a break.”

 _Boy, am I looking forward to that_ , she thought sarcastically. Or at least she _wanted_ it to be sarcastically. But she couldn’t lie to herself. Despite feeling like the world was collapsing around her, the garden had felt like a private island – a safe haven amidst all this insanity. If Ray invited her to that island again, she was sure she would say yes.

“It’s such a relief to be able to speak to you so freely about all this. You’ll be happy here. We’ll be happy here, together.”

_I wonder how far a jump it is from those windows to the ground? Maybe there’s a bush or something down there that’ll break my fall._

Then those fangs of his pierced her again, poisoning her bloodstream with a desperate and most unwelcome desire to be held by him – to seek solace in the very thing she sought solace _from_.

“You have my heart…my precious Emme.”

_My precious Emme._

She walked over to the windows. She thought some fresh air might help her sleep, and God knows she needed all the help she could get after the day she’d had. She may have also been only half-kidding about the jumping thing. However, after pushing and pulling at each window every which way possible, her panic raced to a crescendo.

_The windows don’t open._

As quietly as she could she rapped her knuckles against the glass, trying to figure out if it was breakable. _I can’t tell if it’s plexiglass or…_ If it wasn’t, she could grab the legs of one of the chairs, give it a good swing and smash the windows if she had to.

Even Rapunzel had an open window.

She pressed her face against the glass and looked down. She was pretty high up. She wasn’t sure climbing out and dropping from the window could be done without breaking her neck.

Emme still wanted to believe that Ray would never hurt her. She was clinging to that innate trust in him because it was starting to look like it was all she had left. When she went into the bathroom to splash some water on her face, she noticed a pair of small nail scissors on the vanity and pocketed them. She prayed she wouldn’t have to use them on anyone, especially Ray. Tonight he had twice insisted that he wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do, but something had clearly changed during the time between their goodnight and his visit to the messenger. It was like someone had whispered something in his ear to make him doubt Emme’s commitment to him.

Special Someone?

Her phone buzzed noisily on the bathroom vanity, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

_Jumin._

What was he doing up at this hour? He was one of the only members of the RFA who actually went to sleep at a decent time.

_Maybe something’s happened to V._

She answered the call. It was a weird one. He had wanted to talk about V, but the conversation somehow got sidetracked and they ended up talking about mattresses instead. Typical Jumin. By the time he was done talking about “mattress science”, he’d forgotten the reason he had called her in the first place.

“I’m sure it wasn’t to share something so trivial. I wanted to talk about V, but now I can’t remember the details. That doesn’t usually happen no matter how tired I am.”

“Forgetfulness happens to everyone from time to time. Even you, Jumin Han. You’ll remember what it was you wanted to say eventually. We can talk about it then.” She hoped he wouldn’t notice how hoarse her voice was from all the crying she’d been doing tonight. If he asked her what was wrong, there wasn’t a thing she could tell him. She still didn’t know if Ray was monitoring her calls, after all.

Zen frequently accused Jumin of being oblivious to other people’s feelings, and she could understand why he would think that, but private conversations with Jumin suggested otherwise. He was curious by nature – _like a cat_ , she thought wryly – you just never knew what aspect of the human condition was going to pique his interest at any given moment. She’d been caught in the middle of a few conversations with V and Jumin, so she was able to see firsthand how perceptive he was, not just with his closest friend, but with Emme as well – literally a virtual stranger. It was one of the reasons she was afraid to be so open in the chatrooms. He was curious about her, and sometimes his questions were innocent, just-getting-to-know-you questions, but other times he had her squirming under a microscope. It was like standing out in the sun, happy to be outside enjoying the fresh air, but also being frightened the entire time that you were going to get sunburnt.

_I just never know how much sunscreen I need to put on._

She couldn’t blame him. He had friends to protect, and because she was going to be in the loathsome position of not being able to explain her secrecy, at least for the foreseeable future, she had to withstand his periodically hostile scrutiny. She wanted to get back to business as usual – never being sure if she was more uncomfortable with being the focus of a person’s attention or being an object of indifference.

Emme was starting to wish she had ignored the call. Not that she wasn’t enjoying talking to Jumin, but it had been such a long, mentally exhausting day with no end to it in sight. But then the conversation took a strange but potentially valuable turn.

“I tend to keep my conversations short. I don’t know why, but I lose track of time whenever I speak with you,” he said, a keenness in his voice causing an unexpected skip in its usually reserved cadence. “I wonder, is it because you’re a good listener?”

She had been feeling damned-near despondent, but Jumin’s habit of thinking out loud and asking questions with answers that were obvious to everyone but himself made her giggle.

 _Ray won’t like that,_ she noted.

“It’s late and I need to get to bed, so unfortunately it’s not something I can devote too much thought to right now. I’m sure I’ll figure it out as we get to know eachother better.” He took a deep breath, letting it out in a huff, and Emme could make out a creaking of some sort in the background. He was stretching while either reclining in a chair or more likely, given the hour and all the talk of mattresses, while he was lying in bed.

 _Ray_ really _won’t like_ that _._

_If he’s listening, that is._

_Wait._

The call ended and Emme clapped the phone between her hands, executing a perfect little twirl as she made her way back to her bed.

Jumin had expressed an interest in her. He had made her laugh. He was calling her late at night, possibly while in bed. There wasn’t even a hint of romance behind any of those things, but she knew Ray was almost crippled by his insecurities and that those insecurities would warp his interpretation of the conversation. He was so afraid she would leave him, and if he thought for even a second that Jumin, the one member of the RFA he respected and admired, had any sort of romantic intentions towards her, he would be considered a massive threat to the future happiness Ray envisioned for himself – one that, for the time being at least, relied almost singularly upon Emme staying with him.

Jumin would become Enemy Number One.

If Ray had been eavesdropping tonight, he would want to turn her off of “that Jumin character” the very first chance he got. Then she would know for sure whether or not he’s been listening in on her calls. Knowing she could ask V or any of the other RFA members for help over the phone if things ended up getting really scary before she could secure everyone’s safety would make things monumentally less terrifying.

If Ray heard that conversation…

_He’ll be hurt. Really hurt._

_I can’t help that._

The conversation with Jumin had gone the way it had naturally. She hadn’t done anything manipulative. It was all just a happy accident - one that would provide her with a vital piece of information that her life could later end up depending on. Still, it left an awful taste in her mouth that it could come at the expense of acutely damaging Ray’s self-esteem. She should know better than anyone how easily someone’s self-esteem could be bruised.

It was like constantly having a clawed hand locked around her heart that would squeeze gently or dig in depending on the level of pain being inflicted on her, and now Ray’s pain was guiding its actions aswell. Ray would be a wreck if he heard the call, and the thought of that…well, those claws in her heart would leave behind some severe lacerations. _Protecting myself from physical harm is one thing_ , she thought as she tucked the nail scissors she’d pilfered from the bathroom under her bedside table. But as far as she was concerned, hurting Ray’s heart and messing with his head made her no different than the person or people who had brainwashed him.

She climbed back under the covers and let her head sink into the pillow. She hoped that if she finally managed to fall asleep, it would be at least an hour or two before her phone would start buzzing again. She needed to stay vigilant, which would mean loitering in the chatroom and not missing a single incoming call or text. She would continue engaging with the party invitees via email. Of course, while doing all of that, she’d also have to keep her eyes and ears open so she could collect as much info about this place as possible.

_And Ray?_

Emme rolled onto her side to gaze at the roses on her bedside table. The petals continued to wilt, and the heads were starting to droop as the stems softened and bowed. The petals’ blackened edges were bleeding deeper and deeper into the red, pulling them slowly out of Emme’s sight and into the room’s inky darkness. Her eyes glazed over with tears. She found those damn roses even more exquisite now than when she had first unwrapped them.

_The language of flowers…_

Emme pulled the blankets over her shoulder and closed her eyes.

_Ray…_

Her beautiful, perfectly imperfect rose.

What would happen to him once she was gone?


End file.
